Welcome to Sleeper Hit Support Group, a column diving into the song currently occupying the bottom spot of the Billboard Hot 100.

In a pop landscape that asks more questions that it answers, I'm setting out to answer three questions about each of these songs: how it got here, if the song is good, and where it's going. In this 100th spot we'll find unlikely ascents, falls from grace, and resurgences of hits from bygone eras.

Today, we're looking at Jelly Roll's "Hands Up," a song that unfortunately does not address the only thing he's been in the news for lately.

How did it get here?

It feels like Jelly Roll has lived at least three lives at this point, and it seems like he's gearing up to embark on yet another new phase of life as he barrels towards middle age. Jelly Roll (born Jason Bradley DeFord) was born in 1984 and raised in Antioch, a neighborhood on the edge of Nashville's city limits. DeFord's mother – who experienced intense struggles with mental health and addiction during his childhood – nicknamed him Jelly Roll after his affinity for donuts, and the name stuck after his childhood friend One-Armed Clay started calling him that too.

"I'm from where everybody had a nickname, and none of them were ever good," he told Country 103.7. "I got a friend named Ting-a-ling and one named Dew Bug. We had a kid in our neighborhood named Shit Stain, and we just called him Shit for short. I am not making this up, ya'll; I can introduce you to Shit. We are a motley crew, to say the least."

While DeFord was baptized at 14, it was around the same age that he began using drugs and getting in trouble with the law. He was in and out of prison throughout his teens and into his early 20s for various drug-related offenses and aggravated robbery, and his daughter Bailee was born in the middle of one of his sentences. During his stints as a free man between prison sentences, Jelly Roll started a rap career. He sold mixtapes out of his car throughout the 2000's, the first four of which (his 2003 debut The Plain Shmear Tape and the first three parts of his Gamblin' on the White Boy mixtape series) have never been digitized or distributed online.

The first officially released music in Jelly Roll's discography is "Pop Another Pill," a collaborative single with fellow Tennessee rapper Lil Wyte. It's a pretty catchy song with a silly low-budget music video that evokes the peak of boobs-in-the-thumbnail early YouTube. I've found myself muttering the bar "I'm the cracker / He the jam / And we 'bout to stack some cheese" to myself since hearing this song for the first time a few days ago.

This collaboration was the first of many between these two, and Jelly Roll would be a part of the short-lived rap trio Sno with Wyte and the late BPZ. Their first and only album Year Round came out in 2011, a couple months before Jelly Roll would release the fourth and final installment of his Gamblin' on the White Boy series. Year Round heavily features now-legendary Memphis rapper Project Pat.

Jelly Roll continued to be a largely unsuccessful rapper throughout the early 2010's, with the most notable moment of his rap career stemming from a cease-and-desist he recieved from Waffle House after naming his 2013 mixtape Whiskey, Weed, & Waffle House (a nod to the Hank Williams III song "Whiskey, Weed, & Women").

He rereleased the mixtape with an updated tracklist and changed name in compliance with the cease-and-desist alongside the following statement:

“When I first got the Cease and Desist letter I thought somebody was pulling my chain. I thought, ‘Surely I’m not known enough for Waffle House to give a shit about me using their name.’ I forwarded the email over to my attorney, and he told he told me it was the real deal! I was like, ‘Hell no!!! I know Waffle House ain’t acting like this, after all the all star breakfast meals that I’ve devoured over the years!’ 

I just honestly can’t believe that such a corporate giant would be bothered by me, in essence, promoting them. Let’s be real here, the Waffle House after 8:00pm looks like a bottom-of-the-barrel BYOB bar.

Obviously the only response I can have toward Waffle House is comply. Still kinda pisses me off though… the mixtape was free… no harm was done. For Waffle House to be upset and say it was ‘Defamation of Character’ is like… are you fucking serious? This is the mecca of toothless waitresses and tattooed cooks. I’ve never walked in a Waffle House sober in my life, and I doubt you can find many people who have.

Now my job is to re-release Whiskey Weed & ‘Women’ with a few new tricks and some funny skits!!! And of course my album the Big Sal Story is in stores now via Select-O-Hits. We are about to shoot the video for ‘What They Waiting On,’ and I am also touring right now throughout the South. Thanks to everyone who is supporting me through this madness!”

From this mixtape, I was particularly tickled by the track "Thats Cool."

Jelly Roll would begin dipping his toes into country instrumentation with the Whiskey Sessions EP the following year. Though he was still rapping, acoustic guitars and live drums found their way into the mix.

He would further lean into this country-rap hybrid on the mixtape Therapeutic Music 5 in 2015, but would lean back into rap for another four years or so afterwards. In the meantime, Jelly Roll would release seven more albums (3 of them collaborative), have a son, and get married to Bunnie Xo a year into their relationship. Whiskey Sessions II – a full album companion to the EP – continued to toe that line between Jelly Roll's two genres, and randomly has a feature from Travis Barker on the closer, a re-release of "When I Get Rich" from the initial Whiskey Sessions EP.

The full country pivot took another five albums (which because of how prolific Jelly Roll was, that's only two years' time), with 2021's Ballads of the Broken earning him his first Hot 100 entry. Album cut "Son of a Sinner," a cut-and-dry country ballad about the struggles of addiction, debuted at #67 10 months after its initial release, peaking at #31 in a slow three-month climb. On signing Jelly Roll for publishing, president of BMG Nashville Jon Loba made this poorly-aged statement: “I had been telling the staff for about a year, ‘We need a country Post Malone. So much of his audience and our audience are the same. Where is that guy?'”

He's been climbing the country ladder ever since with endless collaborations both within country and across genres. If I had a nickel for every time Jelly Roll appeared on a song that lazily interpolates a beloved semi-one-hit-wonder in its chorus, I would have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. His collaboration with nondescript country white boy Dustin Lynch "Chevrolet" interpolates Uncle Kracker's 2002 hit "Drift Away," and it may as well be an advertisement for the titular motor vehicle brand.

The other is "Lonely Road," the single that rung in mgk's own pivot to country. In what may be the laziest among lazy interpolations, the chorus melody of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" repeats with little reprieve throughout the song.

Jelly Roll has yet to really have a truly huge hit on his hands. His two biggest hits, 2023's "Need A Favor" and 2024's "I Am Not Okay," could have very easily passed the average person by considering how rooted they are in worship. But because those songs did about as well as they could have (peaking at #13 and #14 respectively), Jelly Roll has only continued to lean into that niche when he's not appearing on the Sonic 3 soundtrack or phoning in a verse for NBA Youngboy (however that song in itself is pretty outwardly religious).

While he lost Best New Artist in 2024 to R&B singer Victoria Monét, Jelly Roll racked up three Grammys this past February for Best Country Album, Best Country Duo/Group Performance (alongside Shaboozey), and Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song. When he won the former during the televised ceremony, he delivered the following, very strange acceptance speech. Later that night, he vowed that "“Everybody’s going to hear exactly what I have to say about it in the most loud and clear way I’ve ever spoken in my life,” and never followed up on that promise.

Most recently, Jelly has been in the news amid his divorce from Bunnie Xo. They have separated after ten years of marriage, and "Hands Up" is his first song since that news broke and has eclipsed any buzz his music may have gotten.

With all that said...

Is the song any good?

I think there is an inherent ceiling to the amount I could potentially enjoy a song by Mr. Roll. This is by no means an endorsement of this song, but I do find it to be fairly well crafted, all things considered.

“Hands Up” revolves around scenarios where you’re compelled to do the titular action, acting as a bit of a capsule autobiography for Jelly Roll. He had his hands up at a Rage Against the Machine concert in '99, when he got arrested for dealing drugs a few years later, and today as he throws his hands up in worship.

Is this music for me? Absolutely not. Do I understand the appeal? I suppose. The plucked guitar and banjo that underscores all that's happening atop it is pleasant and the chorus is catchy enough. It's not overly Jesus-y in the way some of his other music is, and I really would not mind hearing it come on in public in comparison to some of the other songs I've covered in this column.

Where is it going?

I had to delay this week's column because my laptop decided to go kaputt. But in the few days between then and shelling out the cash for a new one, Jelly Roll has announced he's going on hiatus. "This has truly been a lifetime experience for me,” Jelly Roll told the crowd at the Rice-Eccles Stadium, per Country Now. “And in a couple of nights, I go to Colorado Springs and do my last show for a year or two. I’m fixing to take some time off and heal. Thank you for the opportunity.”

The divorce seems to have been about as conflict-free as a divorce can be, and the two have publicly declared continued reverence for each other. But divorce is tough! I couldn't begin to imagine how difficult it must be to go through a divorce as public as this one is proving to be.

But as for Jelly Roll's career, I don't know what the country landscape will look like in a year or two. The Hot 100 has been unquestionably dominated by country this year, but no musical trend lasts forever. It could very well be an uphill battle if/when Jelly Roll decides to return to the public eye. I suppose BMG will have to find a new guy to slap onto every song they want a guest verse for.